Northward

It sometimes comes as a shock. You have a quiet morning and you decide that you are going to make your on-line rounds before everyone else is awake; whatever your regulars are (email, blogs, facebook, webcomics, Canadian World Domination updates, etc). Everything is going fine, until you notice the date of the last time that you posted anything and then you calculate what todays date is. The distance seems much longer than the number of days you remember enjoying. But then, you did enjoy those days, with all their business and excitement, so, perhaps, as the old saying goes "time flies when you are having fun."

(N.B. the you of the second person pronouns in the previous paragraph was purely a rhetorical device. None of the statements are meant to imply, suggest, or otherwise convict anyone of any general behavioral patterns or particular acts. All of the statements are intended to apply primarily to the author of this blog (except the bit about the frequent visits to the Canadian World Domination site. Crazy Canucks). )

I am right now sitting in my Aunt's living room, enjoying a lovely sunshiney-shiney mornin--in Grand Blanc, MI. I'm on vacation with my family right now, visiting with family and old friends here in the north country. We left...a week ago? A week and a day, since I'm calculating dates. But I honestly have trouble remembering what day of the week it is. The trip has been very good so far. My parents planned the whole thing and I am sort of a last minute tag along. It fit neatly in between Finals and my Hospital Chaplaincy assignment this summer. So far we've stopped in Cincinnati, Youngstown, Pittsburgh, Grand Blanc, Flushing, and tomorrow we go to Ann Arbor, our final stop before we boogie back to Austin.

Highlights? A car trip with my siblings, learning accapella music, dropping by to see Stephenie Seta and her new baby Philomena, jamming music with the Egans, bunking with my littlest brother, drawing pics for Mary Norton, talking music stuff with Uncle Paul, and all the lovely hospitality that we have received all along the way. And although I feel bad that I haven't kept my normal lines of communication active, there is something enjoyable about spending so much uninterrupted time with my truly awesome family and friends.

And, despite my hopes to the contrary, I've had little time for drawing. grr. It takes time to get into the right frame of mind to draw comics, to get myself into the story and the characters again. Time that is otherwise occupied right now...bakara! I'm beginning to whine like Fred-san! I guess I really have taken him as my sensei.

Anyway, people are really starting to get up and that means there will soon be...breakfast! mMm, sVp3r p0w3r+ f00<| ! (Aah, the excellence of a morning meal! a gift of our Creator; a delight of taste and scent; a rush of energy refreshing the body and mind!) Farewell!